Bill Knott

An Instructor's Dream Poem by Bill Knott

Many decades after graduationthe students sneak back ontothe school-grounds at nightand within the pane-lit windowscatch me their teacher at the deskor blackboard cradling a chalk:someone has erased their youth,and as they crouch closer to seemore it grows darker and quieterthan they have known in their lives,the lesson never learned surroundsthem; why have they come? Isthere any more to memorize nowat the end than there was then"What is it they peer at through shadesof time to hear, X times X repeated,my vain efforts to corner a room'ssnickers? Do they mock me? Forever?Out there my past has risen inthe eyes of all my former pupils butI wonder if behind them othersyounger and younger stretch awayto a world where dawn will neverring its end, its commencement bell.